Black Betty (12 page)

“Terry!” I called.

He looked over in my direction and waved even though he didn’t recognize me. Bookies know so many people, and they have to be welcoming because it’s the man on the street that pays their salary.

He crossed over to me with a puzzled look on his face. Terry and I had been in various places, parties and what-have-you, at the same time but we’d never actually met. I knew who he was because he was famous for giving a good show in his first year in the ring.

“Easy Rawlins,” I said to help him remember what he didn’t know. “What’s happenin’?”

“Not too much. I’m goin’ to work out.” He cocked his head over at the gym and flexed his biceps almost unconsciously. Like any good boxer he kept his head down.

Terry was sand-colored, which is not unusual in the black community. Some light-colored people felt that it was their duty to the future generation to marry somebody as light as they were—or lighter. Sometimes the prospective mate not only had to be the right color but had to have a special attribute like “good” hair or eyes-not-brown.

But there was always something about Terry. Maybe it was his buck teeth or the way he walked. It was as if he had the rhythm of a white man. A stride instead of a stalk in his gait.

“You wanna make twenty dollars?” I asked the young man.

His smile showed me three teeth capped in silver and two that were missing.

“I’m lookin’ for Marlon Eady,” I said.

Terry swallowed the grin and turned away from me saying, “Ain’t seen’im.”

“Hold up, man.” I ran up beside Terry, and he stopped.

“What?”

“I heard you did his book.”

“That’s some shit. I hardly even know the niggah.”

He made to walk off but I stood in front of him. I was close to a foot taller than Terry.

“I could go up to fifty,” I told him.

“Get outta my way, man.”

It was putting my hand on his shoulder; that was my mistake. Terry brought up his left arm to block me and then he threw a quick jab to my head.

That was okay. I could take a welterweight jab. I reached my arms out around to catch him in a bear hug, but Terry was too fast. He unloaded a half-dozen uppercuts to my middle, two of them landing where Commander Styles had hit me. I was on the ground as fast as I could get there and Terry was running down the street.

It was sort of funny watching a man run away after beating me to the ground. I laughed while holding my ribs.

“You okay, mistah?”

The dignified old man was peering down at me. He didn’t look worried, just a little sad, tired of leaving dead men in his wake.

I DIDN’T TAKE the old man’s hand because I didn’t want to owe anybody anything.

After about a minute or two I pulled myself up into a sort of stooping stance.

“You okay?” he asked again.

“What do you want?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Them black mens over dere in that place always be fightin’,” he said. I wasn’t ready to walk yet so I let him go on. “I oughtta call the cops on’em. Always hittin’ an’ hurtin’ an’ bein’ fools. That boy hit you is like that. He one’a them. But he don’t know. No he don’t.”

“Don’t know what?” I asked.

“That it’s always a black man out there hittin’ another black man so all the white folks could laugh: ‘Look at that fool.’” The old man made like he was a pointing white man. “‘Beatin’ the blood outta his own brother.’”

I don’t think I even answered the old man. Nothing more than a nod anyway.

But I knew he was right.

SAUL LYNX’S OFFICE was on the boardwalk at Venice Beach.

I drove down there intent on taking out my anger and my complaints on a white man. Lynx’s office was in a small pink bungalow flanked by a Mexican bodega on one side and an empty lot on the other. It faced over a cracked concrete walkway onto the empty beach and flat gray ocean. Even in the summer Venice was empty. Motorcycle gangs, drug addicts, and wanderers were the only regular inhabitants. It was almost a poor man’s beach back then.

Nobody answered my knock and the doorknob wouldn’t turn.

At the back of the lot there was a slab cement wall with maybe fifteen inches between it and Saul’s office. I scraped an elbow making it through the window.

His office was spare. The desk was just a table with a folding chair. No drawers. The tin trash can was lined with an empty brown paper bag. The floor was swept and newly mopped, clean enough to eat off. No file cabinets, but there was a small oak bureau that had a drawer and cabinet space. A bottle of red wine and a .38 were in the cabinet. A small stack of papers was all the drawer had to offer. I put the .38 in my pocket and carried the stack of papers to his desk.

Mr. Lynx was a hunter, had a license for small game in California. He was a veteran and he’d done some kind of work once for Crandall Industries. By the look of the bookkeeping journal he seemed to owe out more money than he was taking in. There wasn’t anything about a lawyer or Elizabeth Eady or the Cains.

I could tell by his office that Mr. Lynx played his whole life close to the vest. I sat back in his two-dollar chair and rubbed my aching side. For some reason it didn’t surprise me that Saul Lynx decided to come through the door at that very moment.

Everything he wore was the same except for the tie. This one was sky-blue, the kind of synthetic blue that didn’t go with anything.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

It was almost worth the bloody elbow to see old deadpan Saul shook up like that.

“Thought I’d drop by an’ tell you what’s happenin’.”

“Get up from there. You can’t sit there.” He glanced over at the cabinet.

I got myself up out of the chair, managing not to wince too much.

“What happened to you?” Saul asked. His whole body was leaning toward that cabinet.

“Have a seat,” I said, gesturing at the chair.

There was a moment of indecision. Saul was wondering about the odds of him getting to the pistol before I used my superior size to stop and mutilate him.

Finally he put his smile back on and went to the chair.

“What do you have?” he asked.

“I met your friend.”

His eyes asked, “who?”

“Calvin Hodge.”

Saul shook his head while pursing his lips. No.

“I met him out at the Cain residence. I had to go through a gate that said ‘Beverly Estates.’”

“I don’t know what this map lesson has to do with me, Mr. Rawlins.” He sat back, secure again in his undertaker facade. “You want a drink?”

“No thanks. I don’t drink.” I smiled and took the .38 from my back pocket. I cracked it open to make sure that it was loaded—it was—then I cocked back the hammer and placed it down on the table. I can learn a lesson, even from a wild man like Styles. I placed the pistol closer to me than to him, but I was standing so he had the closer reach.

“It’s gonna go off we go after it,” I said.

Saul split his eyes between the pistol and my hand. A thin line of sweat formed across his upper lip.

“You see, it’s at times like these that we truly are equals. No bullshit now.” I held up the lecturing finger of my left hand. I needed the right to go after that gun if I had to.

But I didn’t think that I’d have to. Saul Lynx was a cautious man. He didn’t have a thing incriminating in that office. And that was amazing, because even your most pious, God-fearing man has got something to incriminate him. That’s just the way men are.

“What’s this about, Rawlins?”

“Hodge hire you?”

He looked up at me, hefting that potato he used as a nose between blazing green eyes. “You’re off the case. Keep the retainer.”

“You don’t want me t’find Betty?”

“I’d appreciate it if you left me my property.” He nodded toward the pistol.

“Who hired you, man?” I asked.

Saul’s shoulders twitched. That was as close as he came to lunging for that gun.

“I don’t have to answer your questions. I paid you good money and you haven’t produced a thing as far as I can see. You don’t scare me.”

I believed him. Mr. Lynx was a tough man. That’s why his nose was so misshapen.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll drop it ’cause I don’t have anything in it. But if the cops come to me about Marlon or Betty or anybody else I looked into for you—I’ma give’em your name an’ number.”

Lynx didn’t even shrug.

I snatched the pistol from the table so fast that he didn’t even have time to blink.

“I’ll send this back to ya,” I said. Disarming desperate white men was becoming a habit.

He didn’t get up to see me out the door.

OUTSIDE I REALIZED how dark it was in Saul’s office. He didn’t have any windows up front and the brightest lamplight couldn’t have been over sixty watts.

Out in front of the bodega was a big yellow trash can filled with popsicle sticks, cupcake wrappers, wine and beer bottles in sleek brown bags—and one large paper bag that seemed to be full.

I thought of Saul’s clean floors and his neat trash can.

The bag had the rind of a pastrami on rye, an empty bottle of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda, and various papers—some of which had Saul Lynx’s name written on them.

I carried my find back to the car wondering why I bothered.

I guess some habits only die with the man.

THE KIDS AND I WENT THROUGH the trash bag together. It was a little game we played. We took out our own trash can from under the sink and Feather looked for things I needed to keep so I could read them. Other things were all dirty and needed to be thrown away.

“How come you wanna be readin’ ’em?” Feather asked.

“Because it’s a secret and I’m trying to find it out.”

Jesus helped his sister sift through the papers and food containers.

There was hardly anything worthwhile to be found. Just a few small sheets of paper with notes scribbled down on them. One had “Calvin Hodge” written on it with an address on Robertson Boulevard. I knew the building. I had already looked up Hodge’s address but it was good to know for a fact that the two of them were linked. Another paper had “Elizabeth Eady” on it. It was also inscribed with the initials FL and Odell’s address.

There was a third paper that said simply “Ronald Hawkes” with a question mark next to the name.

“DADDY, I’M HUNGRY,” Feather whined. “What we have for dinner?”

“Little girls,” I said in as close to a Boris Karloff accent as I could manage. I let my eyes grow big and developed a big hump on my back.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” Feather screamed with glee. She flew out of the kitchen. I came shambling on behind her chanting, “Girly arms, yummy good. Mmmmm.”

We went all through the house. Over furniture and under tables. Jesus joined us, making the little girl as happy as a human being can be. We went out the back door and all around the yard until finally a very tired, almost frightened little girl got caught between her two men in a corner of the back fence.

“Nooooooo!” she screamed but I grabbed her with my one good monster arm and hefted her up so that I could take big old monster bites out of her stomach.

But then I stopped.

“Ugh! Raw!” I growled to Jesus. “Gotta cook her. Put her in oven.”

So we threw the protesting little baby into the backseat and drove off to Mama’s Hacienda, where we had all kinds of tacos and burritos with beans.

I GOT THREE CALLS THAT NIGHT.

The first one was from a woman whose voice was unfamiliar to me.

“Mr. Rawlins?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m Gwendolyn Barnes. We met the other day.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t remember. Who are you?”

“I answered the door at Sarah Cain’s.”

“Oh yeah, the white girl with the tan.” I don’t know why I said that. I guess I was still angry about everything that had happened. “What do you want?”

“Miss Cain would like to see you.”

“Where’d you pick up this number?”

“Mr. Hodge gave it to Miss Cain. He didn’t think that it was a good idea to call you but she insisted. Will you come?”

“No thanks. They canceled my passport to Beverly Hills. I can’t go back there for five years at least.” I was only half joking.

“She won’t be at that house,” Gwendolyn told me. “She’s at her farm. You take the Coast Highway almost to Oxnard but then take the exit to Lea. There’s a yellow phone booth at the end of the road. You can call us from there.” She rattled off a phone number and I jotted it down. “I can come lead you to the house from there. It’s hard to find if you don’t know the shortcut.”

“Thanks for the directions, Miss Barnes, but I don’t think I’ma be usin’em. You see, I don’t have anything to do with your employer anymore. We’re quits.”

There was a muffled sound over the phone. I heard some voices and then some kind of commotion.

Finally I said, “Hello? Hello? I’m not just gonna sit here and hold the phone for you, honey.”

“Just a minute,” she said, exasperated with me. Then, “Miss Cain assures you that only she and I will be here when you come and she’s willing to pay you six hundred and thirty-seven dollars for your trouble.”

Must have been the loose change at the bottom of her purse.

“I don’t think so, Miss Barnes. I’m not sure that I can afford any more of your boss’s money.”

“Please, Mr. Rawlins,” she said as if I knew her, as if I owed her something.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll sleep on it. If you hear from me tomorrow, let’s say about two, well then, you will. Okay?”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Don’t thank me unless I call.”

I held down the phone button and thought about the women. I liked women, at least I liked something about them. I liked how they walked and smelled and how they looked at the world in a really different way than men. Because they were so different they were always full of surprises. But I’d had enough surprises.

I was still holding the phone when it started to ring again.

“Yeah?”

“This is Faye Rabinowitz,” a crisp businesslike voice said. “Is Ezekiel Rawlins there?”